Round Up World in brief: January 25

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AFGHANISTAN: Militants killed four people in an assault on the offices of the Save the Children charity in the city of Jalalabad yesterday.

The victims comprised two members of staff, a security guard and a soldier. A suicide bomber who started the attack and four other assailants also died, according to provincial governor’s spokesman Attahullah Khogyani.

RUSSIA: The Supreme Court has overturned a decision to deport Uzbek citizen Khudoberdy Nurmatov back to his homeland.

Mr Nurmatov fled to Russia in 2008, saying he had been tortured by the regime of Islam Karimov, who died in 2016. Mr Karimov’s government was widely accused of barbaric treatment of opponents, including boiling dissidents to death.

He has never been granted asylum and was sentenced to deportation by a district court in August, but this was halted after the European Court of Human Rights intervened.

SLOVENIA: Thousands of public-sector workers in Slovenia went on strike for a day yesterday, rallying in Ljubljana for better wages.

Schools and nurseries were closed while health and social services operated on a reduced scale. Crowds blew whistles and chanted: “Decent work, decent pay” and “Slovenia is in the EU but our wages aren’t.”

TURKEY: Reporters Without Borders condemned a “witch-hunt against critics” yesterday after state media reported that 11 people had been arrested for “terrorist propaganda.”

Among 150 people detained for alleged support of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in northern Syria, 11 were arrested for pro-YPG social media posts while others were questioned for similar offences, the Anadolu News Agency said.